Your experience with <i>The Card Counter</i> reminds me of my first cinema experience back, <i>The Killing of Two Lovers</i> at the Landmark Century as well. I had similarly imagined I would return for a big spectacle movie, but opting for the smaller movie paid off so well—it drove home how much I had missed truly being able to soak in the silence and dark. And while <i>The Killing of Two Lovers</i> is a smaller movie and could work on a TV, I'm sure the foreboding mountains walling in that tiny town would not have been as formidable at home.
Side note on <i>Memoria</i>: I was perfectly fine with the release strategy when it was announced, sounded like a cool idea. Now? It's 2 weeks from release in NYC and Neon hasn't announced what city is next, let alone a short list of cities that are guaranteed to get it. Their website doesn't even acknowledge the NYC screening, you have to dig through their social media to find information. I guess in assessing the idea of the release strategy I didn't account for the distributor being apathetic and unorganized.
The last film I saw in a theater before the shutdown was GET SHORTY, a special screening presented by Barry Sonnenfeld at the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn. That was March 9, 2020, more than a week before New York City shut down. Still, when I got to the sold-out screening and realized that at least two thirds of the seats were empty, I started to wonder if I hadn't made a stupid mistake. As much as I enjoyed that screening and discussion, there was a inescapable uneasiness to the evening, like we were in a war zone trying to pretend things were normal.
Since getting vaccinated, my girlfriend and I have seen plenty of movies, all at Alamo (either Brooklyn or the new lower Manhattan location that opened in October). The first five were A QUIET PLACE PART II, IN THE HEIGHTS, THE SPARKS BROTHERS, ZOLA and SUMMER OF SOUL, all of which I was happy to be seeing on a big screen, and which I'm sure benefited from the setting.
If I haven't ventured beyond Alamo, maybe it's because of the way that final 2020 screening took on epic dimensions in my mind. It feels safe there, as safe as anything is these days. (Being able to order drinks doesn't hurt either.) I can pretend things are almost normal in a movie theater in a way I can't while hunkered down watching something on TV in our apartment.
Of course, the flip side is, Alamo's safety protocols mean a theater is still never operating at more than half capacity. I worry about how long that can (and will) go on.
I got to see Memoria and it's the kind of film you'd think you could get away with watching at home, but the way it wants you to sit with stillness and quiet makes theatrical viewing critical. At home you'll inevitably allow yourself to be distracted by any number of things, but in a theater you have to sit there and keep paying attention. It just won't work as well outside of a theatrical context.
My last theatrical movie before the shutdown and my first afterwards were the same movie: Hello Dolly. My wife and I saw it at the Music Box as part of their 70MM Film Festival that was interrupted by the shutdown. This was on March 14, 2020, so the pandemic was already causing theaters to limit attendance and make other changes (although masking was not yet commonplace), but they hadn't all shut down yet. It was a beautiful print and just looked incredible in 70mm. It was a memory that we savored for the whole year.
Then in March of 2021, we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary by renting out the Music Box and watching a blu-ray version of Hello Dolly with some friends. IIRC we all had one vaccine shot, but not the second. The movie still looked great as a projected blu-ray. It's such a sweet and romantic movie that turning it into an anniversary tradition sounds like a delight. I even picked up a 16MM print of Hello Dolly (well, of three of the four reels of Hello Dolly) that we can watch at home for our anniversary next year.
I live in New Zealand, where (for the most part) we've been lucky enough to have movie cinemas for much of the past couple of years, so I haven't had that long period with no big screen experiences. But there are a few thoughts this article raises that I've found myself thinking about over the past two years.
One cinema here has taken to having retro screenings every Sunday night, which has been great. In particular, they showed both Manhunter and Silence of the Lambs, which emphasised the cinema experience in different ways.
- With Manhunter, what hit me was the importance of sound. When I'm watching it at home, when it gets to the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida sequence, I'm turning the sound down to avoid bothering neighbours; in cinema that music is overpowering, just like it's supposed to.
- With Silence of the Lambs, I feel that film changes on the big screen. Watching it on the TV, it's a very good thriller; on the big screen, it's a terrifying horror. Demme uses a lot of extreme closeups in that film; watching on the TV, you're at a distance, but in cinema, Lector is massive and close and inescapable and you feel actively uncomfortable in those sequences. I find the film scary on the big screen in a way I don't at home.
Watching Shiva Baby was such fun in cinema. So much of that film is built on intense discomfort that it was almost a relief to be with other people, hear them laughing, and know that we were allowed to find that film funny.
And then there's just the joy of being able to shut the world away and zero in on the film. Last year, even though we were open, our local film festival was still largely online, and it was an intensely unsatisfying experience, feeling as though it didn't happen (even though I saw some great films); this year, despite an outbreak in other parts of the country that forced limited numbers, the experience this year's festival was just a delight because it felt like an actual event of significance.
"It’s the simplest of all possible arguments for seeing films in a theater, but it’s worth restating: When you’re sitting in the dark, with only you and the screen in front of you, a film commands 100% of your attention."
For me, it's the simplest argument for *not* seeing films in a theatre, as those conditions are only true at home. Lights off, phone on silent, not a crunch of crisp or popped corn to be heard - bliss.
The shift in 2020 for what was possible outside of being in a "big city market" finally confirmed my long-standing tinfoil hat theory that distribution can easily leave major theatrical and it kneecaps the idea of exclusivity. Eventive and (streaming company whose name I'm blanking on but they handled NYFF 2020/Japan Cuts/Sundance 2021 online) got their stuff in order I had a brief fantasy of never having to travel to a festival again for fun. I hope genre specific festivals got a boost from this and may even continue offering online streaming options. For example, New Plaza Cinema in NYC is mainly doing virtual screenings despite their placement in New York City and they have Ryūsuke Hamaguchi's Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy available to stream anywhere in the United States for $10 (as of 12/8/21 and that may end soon) while Drive My Car is being one-screened in slow, weekly theatrical rollout through 2022. But if you read any reviews or reactions to WOFAF they don't mention ANYONE CAN WATCH THE FILM NOW THROUGH (paid) STREAMING that don't live in New York or Los Angeles. It's this weird desire to keep things gated that makes me incensed about some writers and outlets (a stupid blind item: a NYC-based critic loathed OKJA until it got a 35mm print release at Film Society of Lincoln Center and, later, The Paris and could not stop praising how great the film was—projected on film in a physical theater for a limited run). I prefer theaters but clearly there's no need anymore and distribution should change its heart or die slowly as Nicole Kidman is forced to make a second commercial at an AMC theater (which, through Deadline, I learned was in a strip mall outside of Los Angeles).
It was really nice to read your point about how "moviegoing is about intimacy, too." I'm grateful that my movie-going life lead me to that conclusion fairly early, to where I feel the big screen is more valuable to intimacy than spectacle in general. Explosions and grandiose battles can be overwhelming at home, as well. But something like THE STRAIGHT STORY is pretty electric moment to moment in the theater and, even though it's one of my favorite films, I'm sorry to say it loses something when viewed at home. So there was a period in my life when I had made the choice to see only the quote-unquote "smaller films" in the theater and watch the Hollywood Spectacles at home... which admittedly wasn't a hard-and-fast rule, but a guideline that was surprisingly pretty easy to stick to. Not to say it didn't take some deprogramming on my part at the start. I started thinking about how people who Independent films still reacted to the prospect of going out to the theater to see them like casual theatergoers did with seeing a new original play. They were more opt to spend $18-$22 on the latest $100M star vehicle, but clutched pearls at spending the same money on going to a new play at a local blackbox, out of fear the new play might not be good. It was the sense of adventure gone that got to me. Here I was, unwilling to go to a play I knew little about for fear of it being a waste of money and my evening, but I wouldn't bat an eye at putting the same money down for a Hollywood blockbuster that I KNEW would be ho-hum, but... at least I knew what I would be getting. It was that... confidence in a product's ability to NOT surprise me that swayed me to shift my behavior and favor the risks in the theater and the sure-things at home. And I feel I was the better for it.
Sadly, however, I have not been back to a theater since March 2020. As a Alamo Drafthouse lover, I was elated that one FINALLY opened in my town... and then a global pandemic hit. I absolutely identified with your statement about how "not-going had calcified"; boy that hit me where I live. And while movies are my 1st and... practically ONLY real passion, I don't know when I'll feel comfortable going back... which saddens me.
I'll try to use your closing thoughts as inspiration to finally do so. I recall going to a few concerts before I left my former long-time home Chicago and, while I was never much of a concert guy, found myself gobsmacked and appalled that no one shut up when band started playing. Like, I don't mean hooting and hollering, I mean the audience treated it like a bar. Like, the ticket price meant to them this could be anything they wanted for them. I saw Damien Rice at The Riv, who shouted at the crowd to shut up THREE TIMES and walked off the stage at least once, furious that they were so disrespectful to be talking during Lisa Hannigan's solos. I was mad too. I couldn't hear what I'd paid to hear. Later, at the Vic, The Saw Doctors came over from Ireland to play 2 hours through a crowd who were WEARING SAW DOCTOR T-SHIRTS but didn't feel like listening, preferring to talk to each other. Later, I'd moved to Austin (ahhh....Alamo!) and I ended up seeing Damien Rice again, and - while not as bad or loud - the crowd was still real chatty. As I was going, well, I guess this is just what concerts are, Damien had obviously spent some time thinking about this since Chicago and did an amazing thing. This is probably nothing new for regular concert goers, but - as I am not one - I found this revelatory. When it came time to sing his big hit, Rice put his instrument down and stepped in front of the mics, going out as far as far as he could to the lip of the stage. He sang the entire song (I think) acapella with no voice amplification. When it dawned on them that they weren't hearing any music, the audience slowly put down their phones and halted their conversations... so they could HEAR THE SONG. The results were mesmerizing. The audience finally felt like a collective, for when it suddenly wasn't easy to hear... they wanted to hear it. So they leaned forward and got quiet. When Rice's song ended, the room when up in thunderous applause. To my great joy, the audience - whaddya know? - appreciated being made to listen to what they came to hear. This also resulted in the rest of the concert being much more well received that the first half.
This is what I thought of when you spoke of the quiet you experienced in The Card Counter. That's a powerful tool. I hope the cinema won't become a place solely for tentpoles in the future, for such an experience is staggeringly rich.
I've been back at the movies since I cleared two weeks since my vaccination at the end of March. The first thing I saw was the Benedict Cumberbatch vehicle The Courier, which I described to friends as diet-Bridge of Spies. The other early return trips were often pretty medicore or flat out dire: Godzilla Vs. Kong, Mortal Kombat, Here Today, etc. Still, just being back was comforting, and giving undivided attention to even the most mediocre late career Billy Crystal directorial efforts helped me feel more engaged with cinema than I had since the start of the pandemic. That effect did begin to wear off. Something like Black Widow or Jungle Cruise did not benefit greatly from the experience, but The Green Knight and Old absolutely did. Some of the blockbusters in recent months gave me that more traditional gee-whiz feeling: Dune and No Time to Die both had genuine scale.
In September, I drove to Cleveland to see the Card Counter at their arthouse multiplex and my experience reflected yours. The Abu Ghraib sequences were absolutely suffocating in that space. I suspect the effect may play a little more hokey on a television. I then went across town to the Cleveland Cinemateque and saw Pale Flower in 35mm, which made for quite a harrowing afternoon.
I really wish the theatrical window wasn't treated like a class issue about coastal elites or whatever. I make 25 grand a year and live in a small city that has one shitty Cinemark multiplex. I still love it. When I was a kid, we had two other first run theaters, plus a second run dollar place. That number has declined as studios began to care less and less about theatrical. The complete erasure of windowing will only make the theatrical experience more exclusive, more elitist.
Horror, especially GOOD horror that has the capacity to scare, definitely benefits from a theatrical experience. One of the best theater visits I have ever had was seeing It Follows to a packed house (not something I'm keen to do nowadays, by the way). I doubt watching that movie again at home would have the same impact, because the audience was losing their collective minds at the scares in that film once it got going. It just wouldn't be the same in my own living room.
In terms of spectacle films, seeing Raiders on IMAX in 2012 kicked ass! It really drove home how relentless and exciting that movie is, and the crowd brought a lot to that (as soon as Indy enters the Well of Souls, the movie does not stop). A movie I had seen a million times suddenly played like it was the first viewing.
The last pre-pandemic movies I saw in the theater over a three day period were Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Pixar's Onward, and Invisible Man and they were all great theatrical experiences for completely different reasons, as you mention in the piece.
I saw Portrait by myself and while there were other people in the theater, I felt like I was completely alone with the movie which made the emotions during the final scene just indescribably intense. Onward was with the kids and a theater full of families so we all got to cry together for the last 15 minutes of the film. And Invisible Man is just a fantastic packed house thriller. The crowd gasping, screaming and then laughing together in that way you only do after a really good jump scare. That's what it's all about.
We've gotten back to regular theatrical viewing over the past few months but I'll always remember those three pre-pandemic ones as reasons never to take the theatrical experience for granted.
I saw a special screening of the original FRIDAY THE 13TH at the Alamo in late 2020. I've always had a special place in my heart for the series, while still acknowledging that it's crap, and had always found the original to be one of the tamer, more boring entries. But seeing it in the theater was a different experience altogether.
The real-life locations (the quiet & lived-in little town, the shimmering lake, the deep blacks of the woods at night) had a rough-hewn beauty on the big screen. Manfredini's famous score felt oppressive and nerve-jangling when it was ringing out all around my ears, effectively putting me in Alice's shoes in the home stretch. Even the characters, blown up to larger than life proportions, seemed more distinct and likeable than I'd ever remembered.
Don't get me wrong, it was still a cheap & trashy exploitation film. But in the theater it had a certain magic to it, and now I sort of get why the series was able to thrive for so long theatrically, even before it became a staple of late-night cable & VHS.
Your experience with <i>The Card Counter</i> reminds me of my first cinema experience back, <i>The Killing of Two Lovers</i> at the Landmark Century as well. I had similarly imagined I would return for a big spectacle movie, but opting for the smaller movie paid off so well—it drove home how much I had missed truly being able to soak in the silence and dark. And while <i>The Killing of Two Lovers</i> is a smaller movie and could work on a TV, I'm sure the foreboding mountains walling in that tiny town would not have been as formidable at home.
Side note on <i>Memoria</i>: I was perfectly fine with the release strategy when it was announced, sounded like a cool idea. Now? It's 2 weeks from release in NYC and Neon hasn't announced what city is next, let alone a short list of cities that are guaranteed to get it. Their website doesn't even acknowledge the NYC screening, you have to dig through their social media to find information. I guess in assessing the idea of the release strategy I didn't account for the distributor being apathetic and unorganized.
The last film I saw in a theater before the shutdown was GET SHORTY, a special screening presented by Barry Sonnenfeld at the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn. That was March 9, 2020, more than a week before New York City shut down. Still, when I got to the sold-out screening and realized that at least two thirds of the seats were empty, I started to wonder if I hadn't made a stupid mistake. As much as I enjoyed that screening and discussion, there was a inescapable uneasiness to the evening, like we were in a war zone trying to pretend things were normal.
Since getting vaccinated, my girlfriend and I have seen plenty of movies, all at Alamo (either Brooklyn or the new lower Manhattan location that opened in October). The first five were A QUIET PLACE PART II, IN THE HEIGHTS, THE SPARKS BROTHERS, ZOLA and SUMMER OF SOUL, all of which I was happy to be seeing on a big screen, and which I'm sure benefited from the setting.
If I haven't ventured beyond Alamo, maybe it's because of the way that final 2020 screening took on epic dimensions in my mind. It feels safe there, as safe as anything is these days. (Being able to order drinks doesn't hurt either.) I can pretend things are almost normal in a movie theater in a way I can't while hunkered down watching something on TV in our apartment.
Of course, the flip side is, Alamo's safety protocols mean a theater is still never operating at more than half capacity. I worry about how long that can (and will) go on.
I got to see Memoria and it's the kind of film you'd think you could get away with watching at home, but the way it wants you to sit with stillness and quiet makes theatrical viewing critical. At home you'll inevitably allow yourself to be distracted by any number of things, but in a theater you have to sit there and keep paying attention. It just won't work as well outside of a theatrical context.
My last theatrical movie before the shutdown and my first afterwards were the same movie: Hello Dolly. My wife and I saw it at the Music Box as part of their 70MM Film Festival that was interrupted by the shutdown. This was on March 14, 2020, so the pandemic was already causing theaters to limit attendance and make other changes (although masking was not yet commonplace), but they hadn't all shut down yet. It was a beautiful print and just looked incredible in 70mm. It was a memory that we savored for the whole year.
Then in March of 2021, we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary by renting out the Music Box and watching a blu-ray version of Hello Dolly with some friends. IIRC we all had one vaccine shot, but not the second. The movie still looked great as a projected blu-ray. It's such a sweet and romantic movie that turning it into an anniversary tradition sounds like a delight. I even picked up a 16MM print of Hello Dolly (well, of three of the four reels of Hello Dolly) that we can watch at home for our anniversary next year.
I live in New Zealand, where (for the most part) we've been lucky enough to have movie cinemas for much of the past couple of years, so I haven't had that long period with no big screen experiences. But there are a few thoughts this article raises that I've found myself thinking about over the past two years.
One cinema here has taken to having retro screenings every Sunday night, which has been great. In particular, they showed both Manhunter and Silence of the Lambs, which emphasised the cinema experience in different ways.
- With Manhunter, what hit me was the importance of sound. When I'm watching it at home, when it gets to the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida sequence, I'm turning the sound down to avoid bothering neighbours; in cinema that music is overpowering, just like it's supposed to.
- With Silence of the Lambs, I feel that film changes on the big screen. Watching it on the TV, it's a very good thriller; on the big screen, it's a terrifying horror. Demme uses a lot of extreme closeups in that film; watching on the TV, you're at a distance, but in cinema, Lector is massive and close and inescapable and you feel actively uncomfortable in those sequences. I find the film scary on the big screen in a way I don't at home.
Watching Shiva Baby was such fun in cinema. So much of that film is built on intense discomfort that it was almost a relief to be with other people, hear them laughing, and know that we were allowed to find that film funny.
And then there's just the joy of being able to shut the world away and zero in on the film. Last year, even though we were open, our local film festival was still largely online, and it was an intensely unsatisfying experience, feeling as though it didn't happen (even though I saw some great films); this year, despite an outbreak in other parts of the country that forced limited numbers, the experience this year's festival was just a delight because it felt like an actual event of significance.
"It’s the simplest of all possible arguments for seeing films in a theater, but it’s worth restating: When you’re sitting in the dark, with only you and the screen in front of you, a film commands 100% of your attention."
For me, it's the simplest argument for *not* seeing films in a theatre, as those conditions are only true at home. Lights off, phone on silent, not a crunch of crisp or popped corn to be heard - bliss.
The shift in 2020 for what was possible outside of being in a "big city market" finally confirmed my long-standing tinfoil hat theory that distribution can easily leave major theatrical and it kneecaps the idea of exclusivity. Eventive and (streaming company whose name I'm blanking on but they handled NYFF 2020/Japan Cuts/Sundance 2021 online) got their stuff in order I had a brief fantasy of never having to travel to a festival again for fun. I hope genre specific festivals got a boost from this and may even continue offering online streaming options. For example, New Plaza Cinema in NYC is mainly doing virtual screenings despite their placement in New York City and they have Ryūsuke Hamaguchi's Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy available to stream anywhere in the United States for $10 (as of 12/8/21 and that may end soon) while Drive My Car is being one-screened in slow, weekly theatrical rollout through 2022. But if you read any reviews or reactions to WOFAF they don't mention ANYONE CAN WATCH THE FILM NOW THROUGH (paid) STREAMING that don't live in New York or Los Angeles. It's this weird desire to keep things gated that makes me incensed about some writers and outlets (a stupid blind item: a NYC-based critic loathed OKJA until it got a 35mm print release at Film Society of Lincoln Center and, later, The Paris and could not stop praising how great the film was—projected on film in a physical theater for a limited run). I prefer theaters but clearly there's no need anymore and distribution should change its heart or die slowly as Nicole Kidman is forced to make a second commercial at an AMC theater (which, through Deadline, I learned was in a strip mall outside of Los Angeles).
It was really nice to read your point about how "moviegoing is about intimacy, too." I'm grateful that my movie-going life lead me to that conclusion fairly early, to where I feel the big screen is more valuable to intimacy than spectacle in general. Explosions and grandiose battles can be overwhelming at home, as well. But something like THE STRAIGHT STORY is pretty electric moment to moment in the theater and, even though it's one of my favorite films, I'm sorry to say it loses something when viewed at home. So there was a period in my life when I had made the choice to see only the quote-unquote "smaller films" in the theater and watch the Hollywood Spectacles at home... which admittedly wasn't a hard-and-fast rule, but a guideline that was surprisingly pretty easy to stick to. Not to say it didn't take some deprogramming on my part at the start. I started thinking about how people who Independent films still reacted to the prospect of going out to the theater to see them like casual theatergoers did with seeing a new original play. They were more opt to spend $18-$22 on the latest $100M star vehicle, but clutched pearls at spending the same money on going to a new play at a local blackbox, out of fear the new play might not be good. It was the sense of adventure gone that got to me. Here I was, unwilling to go to a play I knew little about for fear of it being a waste of money and my evening, but I wouldn't bat an eye at putting the same money down for a Hollywood blockbuster that I KNEW would be ho-hum, but... at least I knew what I would be getting. It was that... confidence in a product's ability to NOT surprise me that swayed me to shift my behavior and favor the risks in the theater and the sure-things at home. And I feel I was the better for it.
Sadly, however, I have not been back to a theater since March 2020. As a Alamo Drafthouse lover, I was elated that one FINALLY opened in my town... and then a global pandemic hit. I absolutely identified with your statement about how "not-going had calcified"; boy that hit me where I live. And while movies are my 1st and... practically ONLY real passion, I don't know when I'll feel comfortable going back... which saddens me.
I'll try to use your closing thoughts as inspiration to finally do so. I recall going to a few concerts before I left my former long-time home Chicago and, while I was never much of a concert guy, found myself gobsmacked and appalled that no one shut up when band started playing. Like, I don't mean hooting and hollering, I mean the audience treated it like a bar. Like, the ticket price meant to them this could be anything they wanted for them. I saw Damien Rice at The Riv, who shouted at the crowd to shut up THREE TIMES and walked off the stage at least once, furious that they were so disrespectful to be talking during Lisa Hannigan's solos. I was mad too. I couldn't hear what I'd paid to hear. Later, at the Vic, The Saw Doctors came over from Ireland to play 2 hours through a crowd who were WEARING SAW DOCTOR T-SHIRTS but didn't feel like listening, preferring to talk to each other. Later, I'd moved to Austin (ahhh....Alamo!) and I ended up seeing Damien Rice again, and - while not as bad or loud - the crowd was still real chatty. As I was going, well, I guess this is just what concerts are, Damien had obviously spent some time thinking about this since Chicago and did an amazing thing. This is probably nothing new for regular concert goers, but - as I am not one - I found this revelatory. When it came time to sing his big hit, Rice put his instrument down and stepped in front of the mics, going out as far as far as he could to the lip of the stage. He sang the entire song (I think) acapella with no voice amplification. When it dawned on them that they weren't hearing any music, the audience slowly put down their phones and halted their conversations... so they could HEAR THE SONG. The results were mesmerizing. The audience finally felt like a collective, for when it suddenly wasn't easy to hear... they wanted to hear it. So they leaned forward and got quiet. When Rice's song ended, the room when up in thunderous applause. To my great joy, the audience - whaddya know? - appreciated being made to listen to what they came to hear. This also resulted in the rest of the concert being much more well received that the first half.
This is what I thought of when you spoke of the quiet you experienced in The Card Counter. That's a powerful tool. I hope the cinema won't become a place solely for tentpoles in the future, for such an experience is staggeringly rich.
I've been back at the movies since I cleared two weeks since my vaccination at the end of March. The first thing I saw was the Benedict Cumberbatch vehicle The Courier, which I described to friends as diet-Bridge of Spies. The other early return trips were often pretty medicore or flat out dire: Godzilla Vs. Kong, Mortal Kombat, Here Today, etc. Still, just being back was comforting, and giving undivided attention to even the most mediocre late career Billy Crystal directorial efforts helped me feel more engaged with cinema than I had since the start of the pandemic. That effect did begin to wear off. Something like Black Widow or Jungle Cruise did not benefit greatly from the experience, but The Green Knight and Old absolutely did. Some of the blockbusters in recent months gave me that more traditional gee-whiz feeling: Dune and No Time to Die both had genuine scale.
In September, I drove to Cleveland to see the Card Counter at their arthouse multiplex and my experience reflected yours. The Abu Ghraib sequences were absolutely suffocating in that space. I suspect the effect may play a little more hokey on a television. I then went across town to the Cleveland Cinemateque and saw Pale Flower in 35mm, which made for quite a harrowing afternoon.
I really wish the theatrical window wasn't treated like a class issue about coastal elites or whatever. I make 25 grand a year and live in a small city that has one shitty Cinemark multiplex. I still love it. When I was a kid, we had two other first run theaters, plus a second run dollar place. That number has declined as studios began to care less and less about theatrical. The complete erasure of windowing will only make the theatrical experience more exclusive, more elitist.
Horror, especially GOOD horror that has the capacity to scare, definitely benefits from a theatrical experience. One of the best theater visits I have ever had was seeing It Follows to a packed house (not something I'm keen to do nowadays, by the way). I doubt watching that movie again at home would have the same impact, because the audience was losing their collective minds at the scares in that film once it got going. It just wouldn't be the same in my own living room.
In terms of spectacle films, seeing Raiders on IMAX in 2012 kicked ass! It really drove home how relentless and exciting that movie is, and the crowd brought a lot to that (as soon as Indy enters the Well of Souls, the movie does not stop). A movie I had seen a million times suddenly played like it was the first viewing.
The last pre-pandemic movies I saw in the theater over a three day period were Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Pixar's Onward, and Invisible Man and they were all great theatrical experiences for completely different reasons, as you mention in the piece.
I saw Portrait by myself and while there were other people in the theater, I felt like I was completely alone with the movie which made the emotions during the final scene just indescribably intense. Onward was with the kids and a theater full of families so we all got to cry together for the last 15 minutes of the film. And Invisible Man is just a fantastic packed house thriller. The crowd gasping, screaming and then laughing together in that way you only do after a really good jump scare. That's what it's all about.
We've gotten back to regular theatrical viewing over the past few months but I'll always remember those three pre-pandemic ones as reasons never to take the theatrical experience for granted.
I saw a special screening of the original FRIDAY THE 13TH at the Alamo in late 2020. I've always had a special place in my heart for the series, while still acknowledging that it's crap, and had always found the original to be one of the tamer, more boring entries. But seeing it in the theater was a different experience altogether.
The real-life locations (the quiet & lived-in little town, the shimmering lake, the deep blacks of the woods at night) had a rough-hewn beauty on the big screen. Manfredini's famous score felt oppressive and nerve-jangling when it was ringing out all around my ears, effectively putting me in Alice's shoes in the home stretch. Even the characters, blown up to larger than life proportions, seemed more distinct and likeable than I'd ever remembered.
Don't get me wrong, it was still a cheap & trashy exploitation film. But in the theater it had a certain magic to it, and now I sort of get why the series was able to thrive for so long theatrically, even before it became a staple of late-night cable & VHS.